Officials say the crew of a cargo ship anchored near Victoria that caught fire Saturday morning may need to be fully evacuated.
16 crew members were taken to Victoria’s Ogden Point by the Coast Guard Saturday evening. Five others remain onboard.
A Canadian Coast Guard spokesperson said flames broke out on the MV Zim Kingston around 11 a.m. Saturday, and were related to two damaged containers carrying hazardous materials. It is the same vessel that lost an estimated 35-40 cargo containers in rough seas west of Vancouver Island on Thursday.
In an update Saturday evening, the Coast Guard said that six containers were on fire, including two carrying a total of 52,080 kgs of UN#3342, class 4.2 of Xanthates (Potassium Amylxanthate), a hazardous material used in mining.
A spokesperson for Maritime Forces Pacific said the vessel’s crew had been trying to fight the fire, but were unable to do so.
Read more: 40 shipping containers have fallen into the ocean after ship hits rough water off B.C. coast
The vessel is currently anchored in Constance Bank, a few kilometres south of the capitol.
The Canadian Coast Guard has deployed two vessels which were standing by and ready to assist if an evacuation was needed, while a fireboat from CFB Esquimalt was also responding.
Should the crew be fully evacuated, the spokesperson said firefighting efforts would be led by other vessels.
“Any fire onboard a ship is a is a serious event and will garner a lot of attention and a lot of resources very quickly,” said Chamber of Shipping president Robert Lewis-Manning, adding it could take days to put the flames out.
Lewis-Manning said typically it is the responsibility of a ship’s crew to extinguish a fire.
“Their first action is to figure out what is happening on the vessel. It’s a big vessel. It’s 260 metres long or thereabouts, and it’s got thousands of containers on board, so trying to isolate where the problem is,” he said.
“The next step the crew would be concerned about is actually isolating the area and by isolating, I mean, they want to put a cooling boundary around wherever the fire is. It’s not necessarily attacking the fire.”
He said critical support from the coast guard and military would likely involve keeping the ship’s hull cool, but could evolve to providing personnel support to the exhausted crew.
“If there is a positive piece to this, it’s one, it’s not very close to a municipal area like it would be if it were docked in a port like Vancouver and two, there’s a lot of resources locally,” he said.
The fire comes with powerful winds forecast to hit the Greater Victoria area Saturday night and Sunday morning, as a second “bomb cyclone” weather system moves into the region.
Environment Canada has issued a wind warning for the area, with easterly winds of up to 70 km/h developing in the Juan de Fuca strait, potentially challenging the firefighting efforts.
Global News has reached out to Zim Integrated Shipping Services for more details about what is being done to contain the fire and any potential environmental risks.
The MV Kingston was in B.C. at the end of a voyage from South Korea.
On Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard said it had spotted a number of the lost containers floating at sea, some of them on the surface floating north.
U.S. and Canadian mariners are being urged to use caution at sea and to watch for the containers as a possible hazard.
The Canadian Coast Guard is expected to provide another update on the fire Saturday night.
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Cargo carrier on fire near Victoria, most crew taken to safety - Global News
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